dream | act | succeed

In our full insurance society, taking risks has become such a fussy process! We are thinking stuff through, over and over again. Even when the risks are comparably small and do not really have any impact on our future lives.

We are just not used to taking risks, I guess that’s the main problem here. Risks do neither play a huge part in our private lives, nor do they occur in the office or wherever we are working. Risks are bad! At least that is what society is teaching us.

And so, we do not take any risks. We insure the hack out of everything we can! From the house we own to the cars we drive. Everything is getting insured, sometimes even with multiple contracts. Taking risks is at least in my life something, that I just never actually did.

But that can not be a good thing, can it? No! Of course not! Taking risks is just such an important thing about life. We can simply do not afford to miss out on that one! And so, if we want to or not, we have to learn how to live with them. We need to learn how to take risks. We need to learn how to manage risks.

Taking risks is, like everything else in the world, a process. Once we get used to it, we can actually learn how to deal with them in a much better way. But sure, in the beginning, we need start on a much smaller level. We need to start with the preparation of the risk taking part.

Prepare for it? What are you even talking about?

The thing about taking risks is, that once they become a real threat, there are consequences waiting for us on the other side. We might fail, get hurt, or even worse, die. But sure, the risks we are struggling with are not really life threatening anyways. It’s not that we can cause a third world war or something like this. Most of the time there is just a bit of money or time on the table. Money we can afford to loose, time we have invested wisely to learn from our mistakes!

At the end of the day, we need to take risks in order to figure out how to deal with them. The more often we do that, the better we become in managing them. I know, this must sound like the kamikaze method towards things, but is in fact a very practical approach. At least if there is not too much money involved in the game anyways.

I for example, learn this every single day on the racing simulator. When fighting for a position, this is a constant process of dealing with risks. On the one side, sure, we do not want to end up in the wall, but on the other, we do not want to loose our position either. And so, we take risks. Sometimes small ones, sometimes bigger ones. Sure, a mistake doesn’t cost any money on the simulator. But the battle is lost, the points are gone, your reputation in danger.

The thing about risks is, that we can in fact manage them. There are even methods and strategies out there with which they can be handled surprisingly easily. You just need to have a look into the different fields of science and technology and you will see, that each and every field might deal with risks differently.

While a catastrophic engine failure isn’t necessarily a real threat to the passengers in a car, in an airplane this story might look completely differently. And so, no wonder they are checking everything a thousand times, track the running times of engine components and exchange the parts in time, so that they do not fail on the move somewhere up in the sky.

For us, those different approaches are something we need to have a look at. Where do we stand with our own projects? Where do we want to go?

If I want to create a new category on my blog, how will this have an effect on my project as a whole. Sure, there is the risk of loosing readers, there is the risk of destroying my reputation as a blogger and stuff like that, but at least my financial independence is not effected from that. Therefore, the risk level I can take, is actually pretty high. I can just try it out. It doesn’t cost me anything besides time and brain power. I can see where this is going and afterwards decide if it is worth continuing or not.

Take the very same situation, but imagine I would actually earn my living with this blog. What would happen? Sure, this would cause a completely different risk level. Now it’s not just time and energy, now it’s also money, real money! The money that I need. And so, even if it is the very same process, this is increasing the risks I need to take by what? A factor of 10?

The bigger the risks, the higher the potential for a quick win or loose. We all know how the stock markets work. But the thing is, can start taking risks very low, even on a scale level, have an impact on how we deal with risks in the big game later on in life?

Of course it can. The more experienced we are, the better we can analyze a situation at hand. Or to put it in another way, the better we think we can understand what is really going on. If you drive a car for the very first time, little do you know about everything. But after ten years, well, you think you are an expert already. And even if you are not, you have at least learned from your own experience how to behave in certain situations. You might drive more careful in the rain, than you do on a dry street in the middle of the summer. Why? Because we are constantly evaluating the risks we take. That’s just what we do.

Preparing to take risks means taking risks.

Sure, you can read a couple of books about it. You can even do an online seminar. But at the end of the day, you need to deal with it anyways. You need to live with the risks you take. You are responsible for whatever you are doing.

See you next time!